On may 22nd, Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach, honorary academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), gave a presentation at the Faculty of Canon Law of the Saint Damasus Ecclesiastical University (UESD) on the sixth expanded edition of the book “Las asociaciones de fieles” (Associations of the Faithful). The ceremony was chaired by Cardinal Carlos Osoro, archbishop of Madrid and great chancellor of the UESD, and counted on the participation of Francesco Coccopalmerio, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and Roberto Serres, vice-rector of the UESD and dean of the faculty.
Cardenal Lluís Martínez Sistach
The work reviews the history of the associations of secular faithful throughout the vast history of Christianity and stops at the milestone that meant for these movements its recognition by the Second Vatican Council and its legal coverage in the Code of Canon Law, ratified and published in 1983. Since then, the Church has held various congresses and specific meetings on this subject.
“All the pages of this book are basically devoted to the fundamental right of association of Christians in the Church, a right that the faithful have always exercised since the beginning of the Church, with greater or lesser creativity and this is also an activity that responds adequately to the human and Christian demands of the baptised, because the human person is sociable by nature and God has wanted to unite the believers in Christ in the people of God. The associative realities are at the same time a sign of communion and of the unity of the Church, such realities have never been lacking or will be lacking in the people of God”, summarises Martínez Sistach in the prologue to his work.
